Friday, October 1, 2010

Three and a half days surrounded by really smart, creative and
challenging people will do wonders for your outlook. Throughout the
week, I've been inspired to take a fresh look at some of the work I've
been doing, think about the challenges and changes to come over the
next few years, and spend a bit more time contemplating the customer
side of my projects. It has been a great experience, and I send my
thanks and congratulations to those who made it possible through
either their hard work, their attendance or both.
So, and process types are sometimes known to do, I started making a
list of to do items for the next few weeks.
1) Move this fledgling personal ego portal to a more effective tool/url.
2) Invest in some personal branding. Just cards now, but maybe someday
I'll have a booth and pretend to give away an iPad.
3) Prep for upcoming international work by doing a quick culture
review, and plot out a workflow that is more user focused.
4) Rebuild my Lean HR presentation deck for non-execs so it can be
ready to deploy as needed.
5) Get my arms around all the other personal side projects, especially
the really important one, and get moving on it.
Thanks again to everryone who made this week the sweet tasty sausage
that it is.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Winding up day 2 with the new technology showcase. Some of the highlights:
LinkedIn is talking every day about where they belong in the ATS
world. Expect something good first part of next year.
There are plenty of data companies here talking org charts and
analytics. Great movement in the space, but pay attention. There are
some bad interfaces, as well as good interfaces on bad systems. If you
are playing in the space, ask tough question and talk to their
customers.
Interactive, slick UIs are everywhere. But as Jason Averbook of
Knowledge Infusion pointed out this morning, remember that the users
of our systems have changes. Formerly just for HR, we now need to
build for all EEs. Keep it in mind.
If you blog, make sure you fed the full post. Short posts make people
mad. Apparently.
Twitter. Might be useful, at the very least can be entertaining.
Also, apparently, there are people actually reading this. I've heard
about the tight knit group, and how hard it can be to break in and get
accepted. I'll write more on this later, but the short version is this
community is full of smart, fun people awfully willing to welcome new
voices. So thanks.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The opening keynote was good, but relied on some outdated sources for her presentation. Instead of telling us what BestBuy did 2 years ago, why not tell us what they did then and how it has changed the company or evolved over time? Seems like a missed opportunity to me.

Sat in on the CedarCrestone survey. If you aren't helping get it filled in, you should. The data is great. Some interesting correlations between automation and use of HR Tech and org performance. No true causation proven yet, but going in the right direction. A lot of focus on statistics makes the data guy in me smile. Some of the more interesting ones can be found on my Twitter stream from the session (http://twitter.com/#!/DwaneLay).

Everyone on your team is the perfect choice to fill someone else’s opening. Including the opening on your team if they leave. Are you giving them a reason to stay? If not, should you be looking for a reason for them to leave?

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Two hours of networking in the books. Had initial conversation with some vendors around the impact of Fusion on the HR Tech arena.

The response I've gotten so far is:

It's Oracle, so you aren't likely to get what you expect. (Means nothing to me. I'm not likely to see it implemented in the next year or two, so plenty of time to work out the bugs.)

It's more complicated on the back end then you think as a user. (I don't care how the sausage is made, I just want sweet tasty sausage.)

We don't service companies that would spend that much money. We're "mid-market", so we're fine, thanks. (Sounds like a whole lot of denial.)

We want to help our customers experience less pain when it comes to integrations, but we aren't that good at it. We're looking for a partner to help us with that. (Pulls another party into the fray, but a better response than the first three.)

No good answers yet, but this was a culmination of conversation snippets. The real discussions start tomorrow.

My free idea of the day for ATS vendors: Instead of asking me to upload a word resume, which you've either already seen or will see soon, let me link you to my LinkedIn profile. You'll get the same information, plus you can pull in my online referrals and see what those people are up to. I gave this idea to a couple of vendors tonight, so only fair to share it here. (One told me they were trying to work out a deal with LinkedIn to populate their database instead of trolling for matches. Should be an interesting development to watch.)

About Me

For the record, I work for a large multi-national company that requests (in a very form letter way) that I indicate my opinions are only my own and don't represent the views of the company in any way, shape or form. But you knew that, right?